


Killua Zoldyck's Painstaking Dissection of Knowing and Being Known

by katabasis



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Multi, Reddit Writing Prompt, but they have never met before that point, gon passed with only kurapika and leorio, hisoka was creepy and awful but illumi never revealed himself, killua never took the hunter exam, takes place right after gon and killua were supposed to have left heaven's arena
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 11:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25469944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katabasis/pseuds/katabasis
Summary: It tasted like life, like living: knowing the sunshine-filled boy who introduced himself as Gon Freecss and vowed to sock Killua in the mouth within minutes of meeting him.-An AU where the Zoldycks' bloodline is subject to a curse--one that a certain two people will peculiarly and decisively see through. Based on a writing prompt I found on Reddit!
Relationships: Gon Freecs/Killua Zoldyck, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Other Relationship Tags to Be Added
Comments: 11
Kudos: 59





	1. i. on past and present and fateful meetings

**Author's Note:**

> "A vain, self-absorbed ancestor pissed off a god and was cursed to have his bloodline fall into obscurity. Wherever you go people will forget you, images that capture you will fade, and your name dies on the tip of the tongue. A curse for most but a boon for a thief or assassin." (r/writingprompts)
> 
> please enjoy!

It was stifling, that day in Yorknew City. Hubris strikes like some serpentine beast, subtle in the sweltering heat. 

Don Vrioli swallows his avarice before regurgitating it, slick in his throat like bile—like expensive wine, like dirty money. You wouldn’t know from how he looked, but he’d ran a human trafficking ring for decades now, earned enough money for ten lifetimes, and spent a good twenty years covered in more indulgences and women than an ordinary man would know in hundreds. 

He was the sort of man who made powerful friends and even more powerful enemies.

The man had a frame like a paper doll, all gangly and flimsy underneath his business suit. The dirty blond hair balding off his head traveled down past his temples into unkempt sideburns. His sunken eyes, hidden under polarized aviators, flashed with a debilitating paranoia. Sure, he was in a secluded corner of the city, returning from an under-the-desk associates’ meeting, but twilight had only just about to fall. Nothing so spiteful would assault him in the daylight, surely?

They say all humans have aura, and all of us can in some matter use _nen_.

And the _nen_ just behind Vrioli was so terrifying and dense that even the stray aura leaking from the unopened nodes in his untrained spirit shrunk away from its pressure.

He hardly took another step before his breath faded into choked struggles, jugular sliced open in an instant. The man’s body fell stiff onto the asphalt, muscles terse and rigid with fear from that sickening aura.

Killua Zoldyck cursed under his breath. He needed to work on his _zetsu_.

His blood sprayed the path before them shamelessly, alerting a few passerbys. Naturally, it painted fresh crimson stains on that white-haired boy’s clothing too. Looking up to meet the terrified gazes of a few unlucky civilians who’d caught a glimpse of his job, Killua stuck a tongue out with a smug grin and flashed a peace sign, as if posing for a picture. 

He pushed past them and walked away.

Illumi or his old man never failed to make a spectacle of the stunts Killua would pull sometimes, when he’d made the mistake of telling them about them in the past. It would draw attention, make for a messy job, garner too many peering eyes. (But it never did, he would argue.) An assassination like that never did any of those things. Never led into anything as much as countryside rumor or urban legend, let alone a police report. 

As far as anybody outside the Zoldycks were concerned, Killua didn’t exist and would _never_ exist. 

The lecture that all of the children received in their youth was well-planned in advance. It had been made a rite of passage, a part of the Zoldycks’ childhood that was instrumental in coming of age—and for good reason. Some heinous old man thousands of years ago wrought all the fury of the gods into cursing his bloodline into unknowingness; the Zoldycks’ identities—their names and faces—could never be committed to memory nor photo nor speech. They made for perfect assassins. Killua’s sure that the clinical acceptance, the mechanically obedient “yes”-ing is a tradition that didn’t start or end with him, but he’d never been able to get the visage of Silva Zoldyck’s resigned, terrifying glare on that day out of his head as if he’d be the only person in the world to ever suffer that much. 

It was a stupid thought that four-year-old Killua dreamt up, that he was alone. 

He wasn’t alone. He couldn’t be; that just wasn’t correct. He had Father and Mother and Gramps and Illumi and Milluki and Kalluto and _Alluka_ if he could get on his parents’ good graces—he had the family, and he could never be alone that way. His family went through painstaking intermediaries to work with the wealthiest scum on the planet looking for nameless, efficient killers. They would employ servants and housemaids willing to work for an entity, an idea, an invisible master. They’d even found a loophole to the curse, the past few generations—a method to assimilate the women marrying into the family through methodical, ritual, _agonizing_ flesh transfusions that would bypass the memory block. 

It was too much trouble, Killua thought, even if it was out of love. All just to continue the business of killing?

But the enormous estate he grew up in and the horrifying spiderweb of those that relied on the Zoldycks spoke otherwise. 

So it didn’t matter if nobody else on the planet would repeat the name _Killua_ to him as long as he had his family beside him. It didn’t matter if despite his best efforts, he’d never make himself a loving memory or a hateful memory or _any_ memory to another person at all. He had Father’s lionlike scrutiny, Illumi’s and Mother’s suffocating attention, _Alluka_ ’s laughter and her sweet, sweet smile—as long as he could manage to sneak into the holding cell. That had got to be it, that was _all_ there was. The boy repeated it like a mantra to himself. 

He’d look himself in the eye in the mirror and laugh with a resigned scorn.

It was bullshit. Maybe one day he’d find a camera that could capture him, like he’d dreamed hopelessly as a toddler. Maybe one day he’d find a person who could stare him in the face with the same rage he shot his reflection and scream at him or squeeze him tightly in some compassionate embrace or kill him for all he cared—they would walk away and somehow they’d remember his name and they might approach him the next day and apologize or just punch him in the jaw and tell him to fuck off. 

Do people like that even exist? It seems like a far-off fantasy, a childish daydream.

They don’t exist for Killua, in any case. 

One day there might be a solution. But he wasn’t waiting around for providence to fall into his lap, not when his life had been a series of bad draws upon bad draws. Killua kept his head down and assassinated. 

That was all there was to it.

◈◈◈

Gon Freecss lived in a world of light.

(Later, some brooding young boy might come along to say that’s how he _became_ it, that to live in sunlight and bathe in it and immerse himself so deeply in its warmth—it sticks to his soul and shelters it like a soft summer rain’s mist.)

But that wasn’t the way the real universe worked, clearly. He’d get the same lecture from everybody—Aunt Mito’s doting exasperation, Leorio’s kind hearted belligerence, or Kurapika’s well-meaning didacticism. They would all mean the same, regardless of how many times they’d repeat it: the world they lived in was full of pain—unforgiving and cruel. It was full-to-bursting with death and the kind of despair that eats away a pit at the bottom of your stomach, the type that carves mercilessly into your flesh. It wasn’t the vast, unending expanse of blue sky and glistening sea at Whale Island. 

There was darkness, undeniably, in the real universe.

Gon knew when he got his Hunter’s license. Battled through the exam alongside two good friends and made countless more, but exposed himself to a wanting and hungry wickedness in the world. 

Was it Hisoka? Was it that overlapping, consuming bloodlust from the other combatants? Maybe it was Heaven’s Arena, where he wandered to alone after the exam—meeting Zushi and Wing and landslides of viciously evil auras? 

He couldn’t pin it down. Gon settles on the ugly thought that it might be _everywhere_ , and promptly pushes it far, far out of his mind. 

Yorknew City smelled like smoke and people, Gon thought. It was nothing like the mountains he called his home—but neither was being a hunter. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever get used to seeing so many people around him, so many children. Amber eyes flicked around—it was nearly impossible to take in everything at once. 

Following the Hunter Exam and his tour at Heaven’s Arena, Gon decided he’d follow Kurapika to Yorknew in waiting for the auction he’d be at. If Ging had left _any_ clues at all for him here, that auction would be as good a place as any to start.

As Gon nears an intersection, a young lady pushing a stroller brushes roughly against his shoulder, stopping him mid-stride. Her expression was twisted into one of shell-shocked panic, a phone pressed hurriedly against her ear.

“Yes, yes...he’s dead. I swear it, there’s no mistaking that. Locati--right by the station. Yes. What do you...no, I didn’t see who killed him. I know. _I know_ , but I don’t know what to tell you...please. I just need y…”

He froze, hearing her talk. The scent of blood wafted by in the sweltering wind.

Gon ran.

Surely, he feels the gasp rise out of his throat before he can stop himself when he reaches the scene. The metallic scent of death, nauseating in the heat, filled his mouth. He was a hunter, but the sight of a mangled corpse isn’t something a boy like Gon thought he could ever get used to. Blood was simply _everywhere_ —it splattered the alley walls and spilled down onto the curbside, some vile tapestry. 

Shock soon replaced itself as fury, red-hot and laden with guilt.

 _He was a hunter. Gon was a_ hunter _! His job was to save people—and he couldn’t even manage that! If he was here a little earlier, he could’ve prevented this—he could’ve prevented somebody’s death…_

Before he has a chance to beat himself up further, a figure catches his eye. The silhouette is slinking away from the gathering crowd forming, poor city-goers unable to tear their eyes away from the body splayed out on the ground below. 

Gon approaches the silhouette, determined to follow any lead he had on the murder.

It’s a boy his age.

_Huh?_

The stranger looks like he could’ve walked straight out of a concert venue. Neon bracelets cover his forearms, and his distressed band tee and ripped jean shorts _resound_ grunge—but Gon’s eyes end up fixated on one detail in particular. 

That is, the blood dripping off the fingertips on his right hand. 

The boy’s stark white head of hair whips around when he notices Gon watching, electric blue gaze meeting Gon’s own unflinching one. He’s about to ignore his onlooker to keep sidling by further into the shadows and heat, but Gon has plans of his own. 

“You killed that man, didn’t you?” He managed, voice a deep growl—blazing with all the emotion of a 13-year old boy who’d just seen a corpse on a Yorknew City sidewalk. 

“Yep,” the white-haired stranger answered flippantly, blithe smile plastered on his ashen complexion. The kid was unnaturally pale, like he’d been locked in a dark room for all his life in lieu of the childhood suffused in mountains and forest and sea that Gon had been given. 

“ _Why?_ ” he shot back, hands balled into fists. 

“Business calls. Somebody out there wanted him dead, and was willing to pay good money for it. If you think about it—he must’ve not been that good of a person, then, right?” He explained casually, almost listlessly, as if he had done it a thousand times before. His stare flickers down to his shirt for a moment, face dropping for a second upon finding a rust stain there.

(And Killua had _just_ done the laundry, too.)

“Who are you to think you can just _say that_? How can _you_ just decide whether somebody has to die without even knowing him? Did you even know hi—” Gon explodes at the self-claimed assassin in front of him, fury boiling inside him. He didn’t comprehend how someone could take a life and turn away so nonchalantly and simply walk the other direction, hands crossed behind his head. Still, despite his sentiment, he’s cut off unceremoniously by the other boy. 

“You know, you’re kind of pissing me off right now,” he scoffs. “There’s people in the world that are the scum of the earth. Murderers, sex traffickers, big bad drug cartel leaders…people that tick _somebody_ with power and money off enough to call for a hit on them. And,” the boy’s white bangs shuffled past his eyes while he shrugs, “somebody’s gotta get the job done.” He exhales, exasperated, and continues before Gon can get a word in edgewise. 

“I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. It’s not like you’re going to remember anything I said. Have a nice life, stranger.” His voice was caustically snide, with a shadow of resignation, as he turned around and put a hand up to signify a goodbye. 

Gon feels like his ankles are cemented to the ground, but he manages to pry his feet free. 

“ _Wait_ ,” he yells, pointing a finger out towards the other—he’s sure he attracts a few weird looks. “ _I’m Gon Freecss!_ I don’t know what you’re talking about...but even if you leave, I’m going to find you again. I promise! Because Aunt Mito told me I can’t get truly angry at someone until I _know_ them. So...so I can’t _punch you in the face_ until I understand you! It wouldn’t be right, if I didn’t know why.” 

The boy with the bloody hand looks back for a second. Icy blue eyes spilling over with darkness met warm amber ones filled with sunlight and a burning tenacity. 

“Good luck, idiot,” he quipped before turning away.

He didn’t look back again.


	2. ii. on whimsical men in clown makeup and the torment of searching

Killua can already hear the voices of his parents, of Illumi, in his mind. _Don’t act recklessly, don’t act carelessly, don’t act without throwing a thought towards self-preservation and more importantly the preservation of the family—_

It was a painful tempest in his head. 

Still, he can’t bring himself to care. If nobody was going to remember, to pay him and whatever batshit antics he pulled a second thought once they took their eyes off him, then why try to be discreet? Why not have fun? 

Vrioli’s blood is drying uncomfortably on his hand.

Sure, Illumi or Mom or Dad might find out, but there was little they could do about it and even less that it mattered. What part was one kid in blinding green jorts and a matching hideous jacket going to play in the eminent affairs of the Zoldyck family? 

(Gon Freecss, huh?)

 _I’m Killua_.

He thought about saying the words, his own name feeling gracelessly awkward in his mouth—even just mouthing the syllables. He thought about traveling with that boy, running away from home with him, being friends with him, and _knowing_ him. It tasted like life, like living: _knowing_ the sunshine-filled boy who introduced himself as Gon Freecss and vowed to sock Killua in the mouth within minutes of meeting him. He can’t remember the last time he’d felt the need to introduce himself, let alone to a friend. 

It’s a stupid dream, all kinds of far-fetched and naive, so he sweeps it aside. 

By now, he’s well out of the sea of people congregated around the crime scene he caused. He’d shelled out some money for an ice pop after washing his hands, not bothering to fuss with the stain on his shirt. Some popsicle vendor probably felt that distress for a many two or three minutes—before Killua stepped out of their line of sight and the old merchant forgot. 

They always forgot. The people, the animals, the singing of the wind in an October twilight—he’d given up on getting any of them to remember. 

Despite all the hassle with crowds (or rather, because of it), Killua found Yorknew City unsettlingly lonely. There were few places that the boy _didn’t_ find as such, but all the passing shadows and swaying movement and brushing footsteps cluttered up his mind and he felt in order to breathe he had to close himself off from the men and women and children who wouldn’t know he existed anyways. He vanished to some alleyway, pulling out his phone. A quick text to his father—mission accomplished, and a message from Milluki.

_Ugh. What does he want this time?_

**piggy**

[11:04] ur in yorknew, right? don’t bother coming home lol

[11:05] new job, sending the info

[11:05] [attachment_2.pdf]

Killua doesn’t grace the text with a response, opting instead to leave his brother on read when he taps the file to skim it over.

He’s met with a profile he’s not used to seeing in his jobs: flamboyantly and obnoxiously _sparkly_. His target looked like a clown, utterly, all fancy pink updo and too much makeup. A formidably strong floor master at Heaven’s Arena, and apparently reliably flighty with the battles he attends there—so much so that he seemed to be roving around in Yorknew in his free time. Killua had a little less than a 90-day interval before his hit was mandated to return there for another match.

Obviously, it was out of the question: he would _have_ to kill Hisoka Morow by then.

◈◈◈

The damp air stuck excruciatingly to Gon’s skin, left alone pointing at thin air. It feels like an itch on the other side of his skull, a stupid sinking feeling he can’t get rid of. The mysterious boy--no, _murderer_ \--he’d just run into and the way he so confidently stepped aside the corpse he’d just been responsible for weighed on his shoulders, suffocated him. 

There was something about the white-haired kid Gon felt drawn to, like he had this obligation to toss away the search for Ging and dive into treacherous, dangerous waters to befriend that stranger. Plus, what had he said? _It’s not like you’re going to remember anything I said_ …? (What had that been about?) Gon chewed on his lip; that killer had a darkness to him that was palpable.

(It’s so curiously mystifying when this little boy borne of light tries to describe the evil he had just encountered.)

Still—he knew that somehow, despite the blood stains dappled across that stranger’s clothing like sunlight through a forest canopy, that white-haired boy possessed a malice that flourished out of necessity and out of inheritance—not choice. 

Not choice. _Who_ chooses _to fall into the kind of life where killing somebody like that is so commonplace? A daily routine?_

Kurapika and Leorio’s voices swarm his head, cornering him in his spiral of optimism. They’re yelling like tired parents to their misbehaving kid, trying to explain how irrational it is to trust in a serial killer’s righteousness. Some people are beyond saving, beyond the threshold of pulling out of corruption. There’s no _necessary_ evil that some pale, blue-eyed 13-year old took on because he had to, and Gon shouldn’t have so much faith in a criminal. 

Gon squeezes his eyes shut, and slaps his cheeks with both of his hands. He’s upset his subconscious would even dare venture into those kinds of thoughts. 

In any case, he couldn’t just stand here, festering in his own burning determination. He had to find that boy, he had to _know_ him.

He wishes he could do more with the databases his license gave him access to or with witness testimonies of frightened Yorknew people, but nobody he could find except him seems to recall the peculiar blue-eyed boy with blood on his shirt and talons dripping with a dead man’s blood. Dusk fell uncomfortably and unsatisfyingly on the city horizon.

It _infuriated_ Gon, plainly.

He ventured to prop himself up against a wall with a huff, kicking up a rock in frustration from the sidewalk and shuffling it between his hands. 

(What could _he_ do, some country-boy preteen alone against the black tar paths splayed out ahead of him?)

The rock cracked in his fist, jagged pieces crumbling to the ground.

It snaps Gon out of it, whatever _it_ was, and he starts walking again.

“My, my. What fascinating strength. You’re so young—it’s magnificent,” a voice crooned behind him. Like dripping honey, like old perfume, like the unmistakable scent of decay. 

Gon whipped around and instantly came to the rather unfortunate conclusion that he’d have to crane his neck _much_ higher than he usually did to make eye contact with the man to his back. The boy’s met with eyes that are narrowed, hawklike. They’re golden, shimmering with a horrifying, unidentifiable emotion Gon knows he would never forget. 

He hadn’t been matched up against him, much less _fought_ him in the controlled and heavily monitored environment the Hunter Exam was—but there was still no skirting around it, the presence he’d only vaguely encountered then: Hisoka. 

Gon felt disgustingly like _prey_.

With every clicking noise—the sound of stilettos tapping against the concrete—he felt himself tense further. His fingernails dug into his palms as he tried to glare down the magician, hoping if he could stare hard enough he might be able to bore a hole right through his head. 

“Why are _you_ here?”

“You’re so cute when you talk to me like that. And, why, I could ask you the same question, Gon! Did you know—I couldn’t keep my eyes off of you during the Hunter Exam? I was trying to control myself, but your power and your determination steep out of you in such a lovely way. And your _nen_!” Hisoka lets out a shuddering sigh before continuing, one that sent a tangible chill through the air around Gon. “You can use it now…I can tell. Oh, it’s beautiful.”

“So what do you want with me? You’re a murderer. I’d never do any favors for somebody like you,” Gon cuts him off. Hisoka wouldn’t have appeared in front of him unless he wanted to solicit something distasteful, in one way or another, from the boy.

“You’re so fiery, my little unripened fruit. I just thought I’d come pay a visit. You see—ever since I saw you in combat, I’ve wanted to fight you. I’ve wanted to kill you. I can already imagine it!” The man licks his lips, eyes flicking upwards for a moment. “I think it’ll be divine. Don’t you concur, oh, _Gon_ _?_ ”

Gon swallows. He knows he’s outmatched in a fight with the sparkling fop, but he can’t think of a way out of the situation. He’s cornered, evidently, in this dirty city alley. Possessing both the foresight and the agility to dash away when in trouble is something bizarre and alien to Gon, whose preferred method of circumstance was to take on a foe head on over and over again until he won. 

_Think!_

“I—”

He can barely choke a word out before something else glints into view.

The gloss of a playing card—the ace of hearts—and wild tufts of silver hair. 

“ _Run!_ ” Gon hears the command, though his gaze doesn’t stray off the scene unfolding before him. It’s a growl, strained and hoarse and weirdly familiar. “Get out of here! _Now!_ You don’t know how dangerous this guy is,” it continued. 

“No way,” the boy protested in return, already examining the situation for an opening. Hisoka had a hand around the new intruder’s throat, a playful light in his eyes; it screamed a promise, it threatened to kill. The pair’s newest visitor, despite the chokehold, had his fingertips positioned at the magician’s jugular. 

“ _Gon!_ He’ll kill you, idiot! I’ll handle it!”

( _How did you know my name?_ )

And then: _that’s right. I told you. I vowed I wouldn’t let you go, that I’d get to punch you in the face._

Overwhelmed, Gon charges at Hisoka’s arm. It was the kind of reckless, selfish decision Gon was exactly the type to make—tossing everything away for the chance to grasp onto a single thread. He didn’t know why or how he felt so pulled to this one kid, but he would gamble on finding out.

The white-haired boy screams. 

It’s no surprise that Hisoka blocks the blow easily.

Gon is smashed into the cinder brick wall, a torrent of debris scattering his feet. Rising, he points a finger at the still-struggling boy in a chokehold, not unlike their first meeting. 

“You! I haven’t forgotten about you. I’m not letting you get away this time. Count on it.”

As soon as the sentences tumble out of his mouth, Hisoka has knocked Gon out cold. 

◈◈◈

That man is still holding Killua in the palm of his hand, scrutinizing the brat’s incredulous frozen expression with fascination.

“Oh dear. So who called for the hit? Tell your papa I said hi. And dear Lumi, too. I thought we had an agreement—but I guess not all contracts were meant to be kept,” he hums, a delightfully cruel lilt in his tone. 

And before Killua can escape his startled speechlessness and manage another retort, maybe one along the lines of _want-to-test-how-long-I can-hold-my-breath-old-man_ , he’s met with a chop upside the head and slips into unconsciousness as well.

Hisoka sashays away, glancing at his nail beds absentmindedly.

_Tsk. What brats, like little mosquitoes with the potential to grow into much more._

He’ll be sure to come back when they’re both stronger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! lmk what other characters you wanna see in this :) i do love me some cameos


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